A. Field of the Invention
The principles of the invention relate generally to network device management and, more particularly, to testing network policies.
B. Description of Related Art
Network policies may be used to identify which client devices are allowed to communicate with certain destination devices in a network. For example, a network policy may identify that a client device, operated by an employee, is allowed to access a server containing employee benefits information on a corporate network.
Network policies may need to be changed and/or updated periodically as network configurations change and/or as client devices and destinations are added or removed from the network. When network policies are changed, errors may occur. For example, assume that a network administrator would like to add or reconfigure a new network device, such as a firewall. The network administrator may configure the device by setting various policies, such as policies defining which users are allowed to access which resources. When finished, the network administrator may turn the policies “on.” If the policies were not configured correctly, however, the firewall may block users from accessing resources that the users should be able to access and/or allow other users access to resources that they should not be allowed to access.